Incubus Indulgence
by TokyoMegaClusterBomb
Summary: After Season 1, Sylar retreats to India and takes the power of Sanjog Iyer, with terrifying results.
1. Prologue

**Prologue- **

**Primrose Path****-**

"Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."

Peter Ustinov

The horror had found him, as he had seen in the visions of starry nights passed…

"Who are you?" Came the terrified voice, as the small body it emanated from cowered and shook in fear.

"Why, that is...quite the question." Came the malevolent sound of a voice full of malice. The dark specter speaking sly sighed.

"I guess since you are so small-" The monster crouched down to look right in the eyes of the aghast child.

"You can call me-" His voice deepened into almost a growl "**The Boogeyman."**

The Boogeyman's licked his lips in a sight that sent the child's heart thumping against the walls, slamming the veins and vessels around in various panics.

The Boogeyman cackled.

"Your power is going to be so...much...fun, little boy."

The little boy tried to run, as The Boogeyman touched the floor with the tips of his fingers, skin rubbing up against the marble. The cold marble.

The marble changed in feeling on The Boogeyman's fingers, becoming harder, colder and slicker. The black with the intricate orange pattern that made up the floor was quickly overcome by the rushing mass of clear blue ice, the child stopping his tracks.

_"Try and run now."_ Begged the Boogeyman.

The child felt the bare soles of his feet turn cold, the blood vessels reacting to the threat of ice, the stinging sensation as the ice spread up to his knees, the bones and joints no longer responding to signals from the brain, communication breakdown.

The child opened his mouth again to scream at the visage of his feet, ice climbing them with haste. The boogeyman simply put up a finger and said-

"Shh...children are meant to be **seen**, not _heard_." The child tried to scream but the boogeyman clamped his thumb and forefinger together, and so went the lips of the child.

The muffled screams sent him into a fit of delight.

"One so young as you never deserved such a marvelous talent, Sanjog."

Sylar put up his fingers and began to saw through the flesh, and then the brain matter with nary his thoughts and a devilish will.

He would try his new power in the morning. But for now, he walked around the small dwellings of the Iyer family, and opened the slightly whirring old refrigeration unit, taking out a bit of soy milk. He opened one of the mahogany cabinets that housed some of the food, with a slight creak. Pulling out a blue cardboard box with smile, Sylar grabbed a bowl laying around.

**Sylar opened the box and poured himself a bowl of bran flakes, and ate them at the table next to the half frozen corpse of the little Indian boy, his family strewn throughout the rest of the house. **

_**It had been a fun night.**_

"The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man."

Albert Einstein


	2. Chapter 1:Compulsion

**Chapter 1-**

Compulsion-

"The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact."

Socrates

Sylar sat in the small but comfortable abode of the Iyer's, and finished off his bran flakes. He was sitting in a hard backed wood chair, and satiated by his meal, relaxed upon the arm rests.

His arms were covered in sweat. Not that...not that he had done much physical work today, but overall it was a rather tiring experience. Tiring but satisfying. The cool beads of sweat dripped off of him and hit the warming iced floor, glacially turning into a liquid state from solid. He arose from the chair, cracking his neck with a rather congratulatory "pop." His skin, lubricated by the perspiration as it was, stuck for a barely noticeable second to the wood.

Sylar stood and saw his dastardly deeds. Job well done. Maybe even one of his finest works. It was all making him terribly excited, thinking of uses for this new power. He looked at the neckline of his plain gray shirt, underneath the dark trench coat he wore. Around it were little bits of sweat that had turned it a darker color with moisture. Another came down his neck and he touched it, slowly cooling it down into a mini-ice cube. Sylar then held it in his hand and placed his hand on the back of the hot skin of his neck, letting it slide down his back with a bit of a moan. Better now. He enjoyed the little delights his specialness afforded him.

Then his measure of calm was shattered as he went through memories of who to use his power on first.

"That's enough, Gabriel."

"My name is SYLAR!"

The words echoed and bounced around his brain, scraping against the walls of his thoughts, clawing at him. How dare he say those things? A mere...human, to call him by that name that he had forsaken as Father had forsaken him! No one chooses their birth name, do they? He didn't like Gabriel, though with his current...profession he found the association of Gabriel the Archangel and death to be quite fascinating. When he was younger, in those little naive years, Mother would tell him stories. Stories from the bible. Stories passed down over the years. Stories about the angels. The Seraphim. The Logos. The Nephilim.

Sylar noticed something, his feet still feeling the inside of his socks and shoes, but no longer the floor. An invisible cushion kept him inches above the floor, levitating. It was quite freeing, and he rolled his neck in relief. This had been a good day. Even though...Bennet.

Bennet!

His name..was Sylar.

He had looked at that watch. Seen how it worked. It was one of his favorites- simple and elegant. But the Sylar watch...why, he thought about it more. He'd chosen it for a reason. The Sylar watch was a newer model, an...evolution of the last. The next step. The leap forward. As was he.

Bennet was wrong, just another office worker. Another plebian. Sylar thought about it more and more, the rage flowing through his veins, almost intoxicating.

He grew frustrated, and the bowl began to quake. At first he tried to stop it, but then he focused his anger into the bowl. He focused the rage, shooting through him, the synapses firing, the hormones rushing about in ferocious flurries of activity and just let it consume him. And then...

CRACK!

The bowl shattered outwards into a million pieces, and Sylar put up a hand.

He looked around the cramped dwellings and paced amongst the floating shards. He grabbed one with just his forefinger and thumb, and brought it across the back of his hand, a small incision.

He had been practicing.

Sylar focused, and looked at his bleeding hand, a few drops of crimson falling onto the frozen floor, staining it red.

He looked at his hands. The veins. The lines drawn like on a painting. He looked at the skin, and saw every...single...pore. He thought a little to the right, and slowly stitched his skin back together with just his mind.

_He had been practicing._

Now, Bennet.

Bennet. That...fool.

Insignificant.

Little.

Cretin!

He would pay.

Sylar pushed down and the shards hit the floor, clattering about the ice, scooting around like a tea cup across a table.

He walked into the bedroom of Mr. Iyer, and saw his handiwork.

The curved Indian blade left a horizontal cut through the abdomen of Mr.Iyer, which Sylar had let bleed out.

He remembered reading something about more likely being killed by a weapon for personal defense than killing an intruder and let out a wry chuckle.

_It seemed like he was remembering things quite well recently._

He opened the door to the bathroom, to the night's shower of Mrs.Iyer, a rather attractive woman. Nothing greater than destroyed beauty. He had begun simply, opening the medicine cabinet and sending razor blades through the woman's Achilles tendons. As Mrs.Iyer tried to stumble away he pulled the shower faucet towards them, ripping it off the line and having it cleave right through her skull.

The blood showered over him, but he simply stopped the droplets inches away from his face and left them across the mirror in a macabre manner.

Spelling out...

**"Welcome To My Nightmare"**

Sylar sat next to the corpse of Mr.Iyer, adjusted the blood stained blankets, and went to bed, thinking of one Mr.Bennet.

This would be fun.

"Revenge is a confession of pain"

Latin Proverb


	3. Chapter 2:First Try

**Chapter 2-**

**First try**-

_"I got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream._

_You got your head in the clouds and you're not at all what you seem._

_This mind, this body, and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways._

_So don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise."_

Fiona Apple, "Sleep To Dream"

**India**-

Sylar slept smiling. He'd wash off the blood in the morning, he decided, and slightly shifted, a spring coil of the bed pressing into the flesh of his back uncomfortably. Finding a nice spot of both comfort and support, he let his head sink into the pillow and shut his eyelids, to see only the blackness. The darkness. Where he felt at **home**. His humble abode of thought, mind and deed. Making sure to focus on Bennet, his mind drifted slightly, but he had already begun to find out _how this one worked_.

**Odessa, Texas**-

Noah Bennet stretched out with a yawn, next to the bed he and his wife shared. Sandra chuckled at her always serious husband looking like a downright goofball, arms outreached, mouth gaping open with a Yeti-like sound coming from it. Noah walked to the bathroom connected to the bedroom, and looked at himself in the mirror. _Still me, still alive- what more can one want in this world?_ He saw the reflection of his wife in the mirror, wearing a blue nightgown and waiting for him, a Reader's Digest propped against her chest to read as she lazily flipped through the pages. Noah Bennet cracked a smile. Well, there was a bonus. The most recent hospital tests had come out all good, the love of his life would be okay as long as she stayed on the medication.

"Don't forget the pills, Sandy." He hadn't used that nickname in a while.

"Fine, No." She had her own little nickname, that happened to make things confusing a bit, but she loved to do that to him, seeing him get frazzled by her little take off of "Who's On First."

"Claire would be rolling her eyes right now." No noted.

"And Lyle most likely pantomiming a gagging."

But the kids were out for the night, and the Bennets could finally get some rest. Life hadn't dealt them a good hand recently, but they had always fought through. **Stupid nicknames and all.** Over a decade of fighting through, they'd made it. It was anniversary time this year soon, and Noah knew just the right present. Sandra once , when they had started dating, told him of how she fell in love with dogs. When she was little, Sandra was sitting on her porch steps, watching the world go by. Out of nowhere came a screech, a thud, and a howl. Tires peeled away, to reveal a beautiful black German Shepard with near fatal injuries. Sandra and her family raised him, later named Tsar, back to health until he passed away from complications- an infection.

"I cried so much that day...and I figured, if I was crying so much, I really loved Tsar. Maybe I could love another dog more, with that...harsh experience. And then we got Bruno." Sandra had told him. Over the years she just poured her love into those dogs, her life...until she met him of course, she'd say with that smile of hers. Noah had spent a few hours looking through old family photo albums, sepia tinting the captured memories. A framed watercolor painting of Bruno would be the gift, or at least gift number 1. He had it all planned out- Sandra frequented the local art galleries, or well...gallery in Odessa, and had a favorite artist. The guy didn't usually do commissions, but was a sucker for a sweet story, a young 24 year old with over-romanticized ideas of marriage and till death do us part. Well, not over-romanticized in the case of Noah and Sandra Bennet. For many, that peaceful and loving a marriage was just a..._dream_.

For Noah and Sandra Bennet, it was a reality. Sandra washed down the pills with a glass of warm milk, a habit she had gotten from her decidedly old fashioned mother. Noah had his glass also, a habit he inherited from noting that Sandra's mom had lived to a ripe old age and in good health. She said it was the glass of warm milk and good night's sleep. Sandra held up the fluffy down covers, as Noah sat down on the bed and brought his legs over it, sliding underneath the warm bundle of covers. Noah brought his arm around his wife and held her peacefully, nodding off to dream land.

**The dreamscape**-

Sylar walked through the darkness, ever stretching as it was. Millions of people, dreaming dreams of different dalliances. A 12 year old girl in Wyoming dreaming of failing a test. A scruffy and hardened older 40s man in New York dreaming of the Apocalypse, himself unsaved. He even passed a few old friends. However...**he had a target**. He tracked down Bennet, for _he was in others dreams_. In many he was just a shadowy figure, but Sylar knew the distinctive figure of the man with the glasses. The calm and collected manner, the voice. Sylar meant what he said about them not being so different, and for a moment considered it a shame that Bennet had to be so frustratingly...normal. Then- there he was. A man being accosted by his boss for mishandling a shipment of paper to Scranton, Pennsylvania. The boss was Bennet.

He had found Odessa,Texas in the dreamscape, and walked the streets, a specter of evil. He went through the open door of the Bennet house, up those familiar stairs and into the bedroom, where he found Noah Bennet and slipped, sliding into his mind's eye like a worm through the apple's core. Destination had been found. **Now for the fun.**

_"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person."_

Mignon McLaughlin


	4. Chapter 3:Funeral Song

**Chapter 3-**

**Funeral Song**-

_If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?_

Lewis Carrol, "Alice In Wonderland"

Sylar would dream. He was the type. He would dream, and he would have those dreams that terrified even him… nightmares. So he knew. He knew how it _worked_. In dreams, there's sort of a fog, an enveloping shadow around everything, limiting your view. In that shadow, the most dangerous and terrifying things can lurk... ready to leap out and consume your nights in sweats of panic. He watched Noah Bennet's dream unfolding at a leisurely pace, and took his rightful place in the shadows of the mind.

Dreams are free from all but their own peculiar form of logic, the rules of physics broken and strewn across the floor. Sylar watched with those eagle eyes of his, always searching for weakness in his prey. For such a normal man, Noah Bennet had the oddest dreams. Noah was sitting, never flitting, in a high chair lording above a table in the blue tinted room of Primatech Paper.

The blue room where they brought the test subjects…like real life it was kept to a perfect room temperature, and smelled slightly of anesthesia they used- a minty smell almost, that tingled the hairs of your nose. Real life's harsh glare of fluorescent colored lights was replaced by instead a heavy blue filter over everything.

The scene was ordered and calm, as Noah was. Around the table in perfectly symmetrically placed chairs sat his family- Claire in her impeccable cheerleader uniform that came tight around her curves, Lyle in a church outfit of a green turtleneck and black jeans with a shining gold belt, reading an issue of 9thwonders at the table, and Sandra in a beautiful red dress that stood out in glowing watercolor brush strokes from the blue sprawling over everything. Noah smiled at his perfect family. Sylar sat in the shadows and scowled, the pace of his breath growing faster with rage. Even in his dreams his family was never like this... and only in his dreams could he be with them. Into the room came Mr. Muggles, hair shining as it was always tended by the loving Sandra, barking cheerily with loud yelps that announced his presence, a plate strapped to his fur, carrying cups of tea.

A tea party. How wonderful. Each family member took high grade china cups of tea and little bits of white sugar shaped in perfect squares that dissolved into a fine and sweet liquid when plopped with a sound into the steaming tea that cooled quickly at the table. Claire sipped, a smile across her youthful face, and they discussed how the football team was doing- 12-2, probably would make all state. Noah admired the contrast of the perfect white china the hot tea was in, and his wife's red dress.

Sylar was disgusted by the happiness and serenity of the family scene. He would start off simple, and build from there like the true artist he considered himself. He looked at Noah's cup of tea, the perfect white. Noah was a man who thought in details, and even in his dreams there were extraordinary details- the fine handiwork of the crafted china for example. Sylar took his finger up into the air- pointed at Noah's china and like a child finger cheerily painting at preschool, thought crimson red thoughts, angry thoughts, and it began to deform, small red cracks began to appear, scarring the cup. Sylar remembered the wonderful pattern on the Iyer family's marble floor- interlinked octagons, and began to paint it on the cup. Noah noticed his cup changed color and reacted with a raised eyebrow, bemused.

"That is odd. This is a fun little tea party." Said Noah, taking in a sip of chai, at first a loud slurp before he remembered his manners and quieted it down. Sylar giggled like a child with a new toy at his power. Now for something a bit bigger. He slinked around the shadows, coming to the side of Lyle. He whispered into Lyle's ear-

"You know, I think your favorite TV show is on...Justice League. Where the good guys always win." Sylar said smiling.

Lyle pushed his feet against the floor, his loafers skidding across the hard steel floor, backing his chair up with a screech, and began to depart.

"Whoa, wait- dear son, why are you departing?" asked Noah.

The shadows came in closer, Sylar realizing his effect. More room to play. An arm came from the shadows and grabbed Lyle by the mouth, a muted scream as he was plunged into darkness. The chill came up the spine of Noah, his perfect tea party interrupted. Next up was his little girl. Claire stood up with a yawn, outstretched arms. Sylar loved it- playing dominoes with hopes, dreams deferred.

"Now, missy- you aren't excused. Why are you going?" Asked Noah.

"Oh, I'm a bit fatigued, father. Cheerleading practice, finals, walking through fire- you know, usual teenage girl stuff- takes a lot out of me. I need a nap with Sy-pa."

"Wait-wait-"

"Why should I listen to you anyway? It's not like you're my **real father!**" Claire screeched. Noah began to be taken delightfully off center, off guard. Claire walked into the shadows, her skull dripping blood as she left. Then the straw that broke the camels back. Sylar looked down at himself and thought of Dr. O'Grady, his childhood physician, always in that white coat. Then he was wearing a white coat. Why, what a wonderful world of whimsy dreams were!

Sylar decided to make his entrance. The table became an EKG machine, and he picked up Sandra, setting up the EKG with the clinical precision that gave his every move and thought their effectiveness.

"Never mind, Mr. Bennet. The tests are obvious. You killed your wife."

Sandra began to choke, spitting up blood, her veins turning a sickly purple and bulging through her skin as the EKG became a hospital bed. Noah ran to his wife's side.

"Sandy, Sandy- it's ok. We'll beat this." He said, panicking.

Sandra looked up at him, her red dress becoming formless, she was fading away. "I'm sorry, who are you again? I seem to _be forgetting an awful lot of things lately._"

His worst fears, Sylar thought. The red dress became a pool of blood, Sandra and the hospital fading away to leave Noah and the blue tinted room, a pool of blood on the floor. Noah's hand shot to his mouth, slightly muting a shocked gasp.

"Oh my god... I did this."

Sylar decided to make his entrance proper. A baseball cap, that black coat. His favorite outfit. He stood, half in shadow, letting Bennet realize who he was.

"Sylar."

Sylar began to think of exquisite new tortures for Bennet. Suddenly he had short hair, elfin features of youthful beauty, and had changed into a completely different person. Identity is fluid in dreams. Eden McCain stood in front of Noah, holding her pistol in those small, delicate hands of hers.

"It's ok. Just...**GO TO SLEEP**." Eden/Sylar said, the voice dropping eerily into **The Voice** with those last words and lifted her gun, bringing it to her skull and splattering it across the wall. Sylar stood up out of the corpse, covered in blood, a macabre sight and paced around Bennet.

"You are quite awful at protecting the ones you care about. If it wasn't for that annoying mimic, I would have killed your daughter. Your associate's trips into your wife's brain... Eden. Besides this one, hers could have been the most fun of all the powers I'm going to have when I'm done. Shame. Shame. SHAME!" Sylar screamed at the now cowering Bennet.

"I'm sorry...I just wanted to protect my family..."

"That's no excuse. A man like you, who has hurt so many people... needs to locked away."

Noah Bennet curled in the fetal position inside of a Primatech cell, looking out the glass window. Sylar knew how it felt, the cold, the floor harsh against your skin, the smell of only your sweat- and Noah was drenched in his own juices. Like a wonderful simmering steak. Sylar smiled and lifted up his hand, then shut it with speed. The lights went out. It was all shadows now.

Noah cried. This was so easy, Sylar thought. He walked into the cell, and gave a friendly Texas voice.

"Why, partner, seems your jig is up. Want me to end it nice, quick like through the brain?" He asked.

Noah whimpered, "yes..."

Then things... things began to change. The shadows bloomed, blinding Sylar. And there he was, again. It was a cold winter morning. A tree came over the grave, leafless and unhappy in stature. The wind braised his skin. Sylar read the grave, moss covering it. No flowers, no signs of upkeep. Like they had just... forgotten about this person. It read-

**"Virginia Gray, devoted mother of Gabriel."**

_**This wasn't fun anymore.**_

_My life closed twice before its close;_

_It yet remains to see_

_If Immortality unveil_

_A third event to me,_

_So huge, so hopeless to conceive,_

_As these that twice befell._

_Parting is all we know of heaven,_

_And all we need of hell._

Emily Dickinson


	5. Chapter 4:Before

**Chapter 4-**

_**Before...**_-

"_Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."_

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sylar stood in the room, looking around. A painting of a cabin by the woods, in oil on a light canvas, the textures popping out at the eyes. The title of the painting, etched in golden letters, a regal font- "A place beyond time." He looked around the walls, surveying them with his eyes, to see the rest of the paintings, all done by the same artist it seemed.

"What...what are the paintings for?" He asked the nebbish man before him, black name tag with white letters in a bold font reading "Mr. Davidson" on top of a green tweed jacket. Studying the man's features- glasses over boring brown eyes, heavy age lines, slightly chipped front left tooth that was revealed when he spoke, Sylar estimated the man around 48. Mr. Davidson answered in a simple and reassuring tone developed over many years.

"Those are for the loved ones of those who have..._passed on_. To remind us all that...our mortal lives are but a dot in a great cosmic line of existence. Sorry, that was hackneyed, right?"

"It provided..._a little comfort_." Sylar answered begrudgingly, accepting the words of seeming wisdom. There was little comfort in these days, and he would try to hang onto any that passed by, a floating branch of wood in the riptide of the emotional river overwhelming him. He walked along the halls of the place, a pale off-white paint that had slightly cracked over the years. His mother wanted them to handle it, as they had handled the rest of the family. Sylar remembered when he was little, and Great Aunt Eva passed away- one of his few times here. Seeing that corpse..no longer the relative he hardly knew, but simply a slowly decaying, yet prim and properly restored facsimile of her...**he avoided funerals after that.**Unless he had no choice. This was one of those days..._one of those long, exhausting days._

They stopped in the hall, taking a right into a small office. Mr. Davidson sat down with a muted sigh in a chair on wheels, leather black. There was an anachronistic computer from around 1998 sitting on the desk, a behemoth of gray humming along as Windows 98's screensaver rolled along the monitor. Sylar took his seat in a brown hard backed chair with a velvet seat cushion and no arm rests, instead letting his arms rest on his knees as he bent forward to study Davidson. He would study people, study paintings, _see how things worked_...it helped him get through the days. Davidson gave him a reassuring look that failed to do so, and began in a caring tone.

"So, how are you related to the deceased, Virginia?"

"I'm her son, **Ga..briel**." He was not used to calling himself that, and the words hardly rolled off his tongue, instead stopping on the taste buds long enough for the bitterness of it all to sink in before exhaling out of his lips.

"Were you..._close_?"

"Quite close. Not physically- I travel a lot, but I would always send her a little something." Each one of those snow globes...a little token of his achievements.

"To show that you care. Yes. Well, let's begin. I've looked over your mother's will, and it seems she has left it all to you. Were you aware of this?"

"Yes, ever since...father, that was the plan. We didn't discuss it much." Gabriel did not like to mention Father, nor did Mother. _Everyone is entitled to a few family secrets._

"Yes, the death was not...expected. Terrible tragedy, accident." Davidson said, shaking his head with a frown that implied empathy, years of working here gave him that skill, even though Sylar **read right through it.**

"Accidental deaths...preventable ones. They hurt the most." Gabriel had read this somewhere, he'd been reading a lot of books about grief. The process, the steps. **Knowing why he was in pain did not stop it.**

"Mr. Gray, are you financially..._equipped_ to handle the funeral arraignments set out here? This- this is just a standard question-" Davidson adjusted his glasses, not wanting to provoke any argument with the bereaving son.

"Yes. My father and I- the business, Gray and Son, was sold. The money is there. The money to...send her away in a manner befitting her life."

"Simple, elegant and beautiful. The attention to detail in the arraignments- this must be a typo however. The wake, you seem to be the **only one** that will-"

"She kept few friends. Her family was her life. She was never much for crowds anyway. And she'd hate to think we all made a big fuss over her."

"I'm sure her friends will mourn...in their own way."

_"Yes." Gabriel lied._

"Well then, I guess we should head on out and lay her to rest."

This would be another day of sorrow and pain, he knew, yet Gabriel Gray continued on. What else was there to do?

"_Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it." _

Victor Hugo


	6. Chapter 5:A Cold Sweat

**Chapter 5**

**A Cold Sweat**-

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall"

William Shakespeare

Sylar awoke in a cold sweat. There was a dead body next to him. Well, at least it wasn't a live one. His vision blurred he hummed a childhood song, the sounds of his voice echoing throughout the Iyer family home. He closed his eyes and focused his hearing. The sound of his high pitched humming of "Frerrer Jacques" bounced off of the walls and came back to him.

_Echolocation._ He had all sorts of new tricks. Sylar kept his eyes closed, getting out of the bed and walking around, "seeing" everything. He let his feet dip into the water that had once been an ice floor, the temperature of his body going down on command. He let out a deep breath. **Last night had not been fun. **

He knew Bennet was probably huddled against the side of his bed, crying in fear...and that provided a _little_ comfort. But Mother...he took his thoughts off of that. No use dwelling on things past. When Mother had died, she left him her library card, and he would spend evenings just reading everything he could get his hands on, trying to find solace. His hands would scratch against the pages of old books of poems and sayings, providing little solace. However, he had acquired a few new mantras.

**"A man can not sew his fields looking backwards, for his rows will not be straight..."** said the Sage. Sylar took it to heart. Mother would hurt him during the cold nights, but he would focus on revenge. Anything to take his mind off of it. Off of..what he had done. Sylar simply sat down in the puddle of water that had formed. He sat there for a quite a while, saying nothing, thinking less, feeling...**feeling everything.**

He smelled the pungent odor of sweat that dripped down his skin. It wasn't the sweat itself, but reaction with bacteria on the surface of the skin, he knew- that produced body odor. As with most things,knowing how it worked did not change much. He still needed to shower. Sylar regretted not waiting until Mrs.Iyer was done with her routine to kill her, as the bathroom mirror was splattered still, the words slightly smudged by the running blood, those words.

**"Welcome to my nightmare."**

He stepped over the body and stood in front of the shower, taking in a long breath and slowly letting it out. He felt calmer, if only slightly. He slacked his shoulders and the black trench coat that he wore, loose fitting as it was, almost fell of on it's own, a slight shrug knocking it to the floor. He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the corpse. Sylar hoped they had a washing machine. He stepped into the shower, the faucet broken off in his murderous rampage. Sylar quickly reconnected it, and pushed up on the lever that controlled water flow, then pushed in the small pin that switched water flow from faucet to shower head. The water came down in a stream on him.

Sylar simply _stood_ there for the longest time...though he did not know how long that was. He'd taken his watch off to sleep. The water dripped down his neck, and the shower head was placed so that a lot of it came into his mouth, **drowning him by degrees.** Sylar would every few seconds turn his head and spit out the water that filled his mouth. He turned the faucet, and the water became shockingly cold. He felt the Goosebumps spread up his skin. The **rage**...the sorrow...**the grief**. He wished it would all just go down the drain with the water.

Sylar eventually noticed he was still wearing slacks, and discarded them. There was a bar of soap in the shower, but he cared little about that. He could not wash it away, no matter how hard he scrubbed- and he did, the skin flaking and breaking, the soap itself eventually reduced to a small square fitting between his forefinger and middle finger. He noticed a bit of blood dropping down from his scrubbing. _He would never be clean._

Sylar finally shut off the water and walked out of the shower.

**It had not helped. **

_**Mother...**_

"For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment"

Mark Twain


	7. Chpater 6:Poverty

**Chapter 6-**

**Poverty**-

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Sylar stepped out of the shower soaking wet, and had perfected a method much easier than drying himself off with a towel. He froze each droplet of water and let gravity take hold, then before the ice cubes would hit the floor, he would quickly shift them back into a liquid state and deposit them on a towel.

_Clean._

_Efficient._

At least his own cleverness slightly satisfied him in a day of pain and grief. He came back to the Iyer bedroom, and noticed that in the sorrow he had overlooked a simple, mundane and now glaringly obvious fact.

**Sylar had forgot to bring a change of clothes.** He looked to the dresser of the Iyer's, and found the clothes drawers. He grabbed onto an etched handle of the fine wood that comprised it and pulled, using his own muscles for a change, feeling the tactile sensation made him feel more...human. Sylar, in a place where feeling- any feeling at all, was prized, took some respite from this. He ran his fingers over a carving in the dresser, of a tree. It was an old thing, probably passed down through the family, depicting a pastoral nature scene.

**His family did not pass anything down except scars.**

Without quite thinking- at least on the surface level, Sylar's hand smashed through the carving of the tree and his telekinesis punctured a hole in the dresser. He reached through and grabbed a white T-shirt that barely fit him, Mr.Iyer a mite smaller. It clung to his abdominal muscles in an attractive yet painful display of what he had overlooked. He grunted in pain as he put on underwear a size too small and pants that cut circulation in his legs.

Well, it was a sensation he knew before. His family did not pass anything down, especially clothes. When he was little, he was always too big for his. Sylar would beg Mother to go shopping for new shoes, the skin of his toes flaking against the ends of his loafers in a painful display of his poverty.

"We worked hard for all of this, Gabriel...**some have less.** Be thankful to God for our good health and relative prosperity in a _world of ills_." She was loving, but on their financial status, she was less than comforting.

They made due.

Sylar left the abode with a slam of the door, his mind circling around past events and back to his present, stumbling over the future. He had little planned. So he would improvise.

Sylar held up his arm in the crowded streets, as little Indian children began to hover around the wealthy foreigner. He knew enough Indian from the phrase book to know they were begging.

**"...some have less."**

He knew now how true his Mother's words were...such a wise woman.

His raised arm attracted the attention of a passing cab, which screeched to a halt. Foreigners would tip cabbies well, they knew. He absentmindedly opened the door with his power, only to quickly shut it with a thud when he noticed he had almost given himself away in public. A quick glance at the driver and walking passerby assured Sylar that he had gotten lucky- _no one had seen._

Thinking back on all this, it was so...emotional. Driven by emotion, by hatred, by sorrow, by **guilt**. He had become sloppy. As the cab pulled away, Sylar remembered the beauty of the Walker killings. No evidence to be found.

He smiled.

Time for the old Sylar to come back..._with a few new tricks_.

"The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness."

Victor Hugo


End file.
